Let the Racers Race

All of the race officiating decisions will start and stop with Beaux Barfield, IndyCar's race director and president of competition.

A former race car driver and driving instructor, Beaux Barfield was lured away from the ALMS to become IndyCar's race director and president of competition.

As IndyCar's new race director, my vision for the series is for it to be officiated in a way that the drivers are promoted as the stars that they are. I think the over-officious manner in which the races have been run in the past several years has really taken away from what the sport can be, so I'm confident that my style of letting the racers race each other will have a positive impact and be a step in the right direction.

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My role as the head competition official has a very obvious task, but I think a less obvious part of it is trying to create new concepts and procedures that add excitement to our racing and basically exploit the full potential of what we know IndyCar racing should be. Standing starts are potentially an important piece of that puzzle. I was a part of the team that implemented standing starts in Champ Car, and I would certainly like to see some of the same stuff done in IndyCar.

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I think there's a good chance that will happen in a race or two toward the end of the season. My only apprehension is to make sure that the teams get to a comfortable point, and right now they're overwhelmed with developing new cars and engines and putting all their programs together. I just want to make sure everybody is in a comfortable place before I start dropping stuff like that on them.

But the cars are capable of doing that. The transmission, the driveline, even the way the clutch works, although it's a hand-operated clutch lever on the steering wheel, all of that was designed with the possibility of standing starts in mind.

The real challenge for me this season will be establishing myself and making my expectations very clear of what I call and what I don't call, making that clear to the drivers so that we understand each other. I think that's the biggest challenge of any officiating role. It's just more challenging this year, being my first year with the series.

Since I spent the last five years with the American Le Mans Series, people have this perception of me that I don't have enough oval experience. But actually going back to when I was a driver, I've raced on ovals, I've won races on ovals and I've officiated a number of oval events in my Champ Car days. So it's not a lack of experience. I certainly appreciate that I've got to shake some cobwebs out, but I don't have any real concern about officiating races on ovals.

One of my biggest concerns when I arrived at IndyCar was what happened with Dan Wheldon's accident at the end of last year. I knew Dan fairly well from his early days, competing in Formula Ford 2000 and such. So for me personally, for a lot of us who are involved in racing, it's difficult. But the feeling I got when I arrived in the IndyCar offices is that it is very important to not forget about the accident—it's something that people seemed to be very conscious of. Yet we have to sort of move forward from it.

I think it's always important in these situations to analyze the data and learn what we can and to improve every aspect of our sport. Our director of safety, Jeff Horton, has spent a lot of time with the drivers and testing new materials whether it be seats, helmets or seatbelts. A lot of attention is being paid to the safety aspects of racing.

There are many people working very hard to create the IndyCar product, and they're all pulling in what I feel is the right direction. I think I'm a relatively small piece of that. But all of the race officiating decisions will start and stop with me.